Sofia Alvarez / Playwright / Bird of the Lake

What is your name and where are you from?Sofia: I’m Sofia Alvarez and I’m from Baltimore.

What is the project you’re working on at SPACE?Sofia: I’ve been working on a few different things at SPACE. One is a new play about how female friendship changes as you get older - when everyone starts to get married, have kids, advance in their careers and there is less room to make friendship a priority. I’m also trying to get the rights to a novel I love that I really want to adapt for film. I had a call with the author while I was here so I’ve been spending a lot of time preparing for that.

Where have you been spending most of your time at SPACE?Sofia: I have been spending a lot of time in the living room of Kay Hall in that big green chair. I love green leather chairs and couches. I’ve also been taking lots of walks down to the lake.. On the first two days I was here, I walked down to the lake as soon as I woke up and went swimming before breakfast. That was amazing.

If you were reincarnated as a farm animal, what farm animal would you be and why?Sofia: They asked me this same question last year when I was here and I said one of the ducks. I think that’s still true. I like the ducks. They seem so content.

What’s coming up next for you and your projects?Sofia: A few days before coming here I opened my first play in New York City, “Friend Art”, at Second Stage Uptown.. It’s nice to be here during the aftermath of that, be out of the city and just sort of let that be. This summer I have some film and TV projects I’m working on and I just had a reading at Primary Stages of this new play I’m working here.. But now, I’m at a spot where I’m evaluating everything and kind of seeing what’s next. This has been my first opportunity to take it all in.

Where can people find you? Are you on social media?Sofia: I’m on Twitter & Instagram. My name is @birdabroad. I created my twitter account when I was living in London in 2009 and I didn’t know Twitter would be something that we’d have forever. I mainly started doing it because texting internationally was expensive and this way I could just tweet my four friends who followed me instead of texting them each individually. My family nickname is bird and I was living abroad, so I made that my handle. Then social media became this big thing and that was just always my screen name. Now people are like“what does that mean?” (laughs) but those are my handles.